40 years at the StarNews -- my, how time flew

Officially, my first day at the StarNews -- back then, the Wilmington Morning Star and Sunday Star-News -- was Dec. 4, 1977, but I actually showed up a day earlier.

It was Sunday, and my dad had dropped me off at my newly, sparsely furnished apartment at The Creek. So I hopped in my Chevy Chevette and drove the quarter mile to the newspaper office.

Security was a lot looser then. On Sunday nights, you could walk right in. I was officially going to be a copy editor, working the night shift, and so I introduced myself to the desk editor, Vicki Clemmer -- who smoked cigarettes in long holders -- and the rest of the crew.

There weren't many of them -- which is one reason, I suspect, they hired me. I didn't actually have a journalism degree; I had scraped through Chapel Hill as a history major. Still, I submitted a bunch of features I had written for The Daily Tar Heel (David Brinkley's son Joel was my boss there), and the management seemed convinced I could read and write grammatical English. They'd teach me the rest.

Forty years ... it doesn't seem that long. I didn't really plan on hanging on; by now, I expected, I'd have moved on to a big paper or a New York magazine, or to a cabin in Vermont where I'd be writing my next best-seller.

But none of that happened, so here I am. I hate writing resumes and filling in job applications. Also, I was getting paid to live near the beach, in a pretty old town.

Plus, working at the StarNews turned out to be a lot of fun -- and it still is.

Over the years, I got to ride upside down in a Stearman biplane. For a while, they actually paid me to go to movies and write reviews.

I interviewed some famous people, including Meadowlark Lemon (who paused to talk with his young granddaughter on the phone) and a clutch of Azalea queens.

(The sharpest of the lot was Kate Collins, daughter of Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins. The most memorable was sitcom star Rebeca Arthur, who carried her teacup poodle with her wherever she went in Wilmington.)

There were so many characters on the staff. For a long time, after they turned me into a feature reporter, my cubicle mates were Celia Rivenbark (who was even funnier than you'd guess from her books), and Clifton Daniel, the actor, who turned out to be a terrific writer as well. The jokes flew.

I picked up extra money writing book and record reviews for May Herbert, the feature editor. A remarkable lady who resembled a slightly plumper version of Ms. Frizzle from "The Magic School Bus," Herbert had graduated from Sewanee and had actually spent time as a nun in an Anglican order.

She was an eagle-eyed editor who taught me a lot, but as an ex-nun, she suffered a blind spot for double entendres. Once, she sent out a headline on a decorating feature: "The Ins and Outs of Traverse Rods." The good ol' boys on the press crew had a lot of chuckles over that one.

Around the corner was Paul Jennewein, the local columnist and business editor. He was the last journalist I knew who kept a paste pot on his desk; he would paste long scrolls of edited business announcements back to the clerks in back to retype.

Paul was notorious for bringing his lunch to work, sandwiches whipped up from whatever happened to be in his refrigerator that morning -- peanut butter and lima beans, say, or barbecue pork and jelly. He still wore the sleeveless, "Archie"-style sweater that must have been cool when he went to college.

Jerry Hooks, the sports editor, had graduated from N.C. State and wore bright red shirts on game days. He was notorious for trash-talking Carolina and Dean Smith in front of younger staffers (most of whom went to Chapel Hill), goading them into making sucker bets on which he'd later collect.

Then there was Mary Anne, the feature writer, a dreamy soul who was known to plant a legal pad on her steering wheel and compose poetry while driving.

Or Ray and Ray, the two sportswriters, one black, the other a hardcore redneck. Once, a co-worker was walking across the street to Hardee's and asked if they wanted him to order them anything. Ray and Ray both grinned for an instant and sang back, in their best Jimmy Buffett, "I like mine with lettuce and tomato, Heinz 57 and French-fried potato ..."

Then there was the weird guy who left for lunch, his first day on the job, and never came back.

I was told that I was rather a letdown from my predecessor Jeff, a towering guy who "walked like Frankenstein," according to one lady, and who built plastic ship models at his desk. (Years later, we found the wreck of the Battleship Potemkin behind his old filing cabinet.)

Wilmington seemed to have more characters back then, too. When I arrived, "Hi Buddy" Wade still roamed downtown. A former mayor and a big, rotund politico who used to play Santa in the Christmas parade, Wade greeted everyone (me included) with a hearty "Hi, Buddy!" whether he knew them or not.

I used to run into Rusty, the rangy yellow tomcat who resided at Futrelle's, a combination diner and newsstand down on Princess Street. Rusty regarded all humans with contempt -- unless they held food, whereupon he immediately became their best friend and panhandled shamelessly.

I still can't forget Scanner Lady.

One night I answered the phone. "Star-News, may I help you?"

"Yes," whispered a high-pitched, quivery voice. "There's a 10-65 in progress at the convenience store at 17th and Dawson. They think they have the perp cornered in the woods."

Scanner Lady, it turned out, was a regular caller. She sat by her police scanner and actually caught incidents that the reporters (who were listening in, too) somehow missed. Then she'd call us to let us know. Editor Charles Anderson offered to pay for her tips, but her husband didn't want her fooling with the"Red Star," so her contributions continued for free.

Wilmington, in 1977, was a much smaller town. College Road petered out beyond New Centre Drive. We once had a company picnic at a putt-putt golf course (with plaster elephants and seals as hazards), located where several of the strips malls are now.

Downtown, the Manor Theatre still played Disney movies. When I first hit town, the original "Star Wars" was still playing at the Oleander Cinemas, where the SunTrust bank is today.

I remember attending the premiere of "Firestarter." The first scene -- with David Keith and Drew Barrymore running from the Men in Black through downtown Wilmington -- drew belly laughs from the local crowd.

Why? Because the movie showed crowds of people in downtown Wilmington after dark. In the 1970s and early '80s, nobody except alcoholics, prostitutes and drug dealers stayed downtown after sundown. A few old-time businesses, such as Fleishman's (where I bought my first three-piece suit), still hung on; Independence Mall didn't open until 1979. But most of the old storefronts were still empty, and the rest tended to be bars or adult bookstores.

When I got here, there was no I-40, and you still picked up your baggage outdoors at the airport.

The newspaper has changed a lot, too. For one thing, it's a lot quieter.

When I started, the big hall next to the newsroom was filled with compositors, who manually cut and pasted full-sized models of the paper together, using wax. A special camera would basically take a picture of each page, which was converted to an aluminum plate for the offset press.

All that is done, now, digitally by computers.

Beside the wall, behind where my desk is now, was a little glassed-in room. These held the teletype machines: robot typewriters built like 1940s Buicks, printing off stories on long rolls of paper from the Associated Press, UPI and New York Times. These literally came in over telephone wires. (Hence, "wire service.") The first satellite dishes didn't arrive for a few more years.

One of my jobs as an apprentice copy editor was to feed paper to the teletypes and to rip off the individual stories, usually with a metal ruler called a "pica pole." (A pica -- now relegated to crossword puzzles, like "em" and "en" -- was a printer's measure equivalent to one-sixth of an inch.) I'd edit some stories with a pencil, cutting them to fit and sometimes pasting pieces of two or more stories together. (Hence, "cut and paste.")

The teletypes were noisy, clackety machines, which is why they had their own soundproofed room. Editors kept an ear peeled, though, because the machines sometimes rang bells. One bell meant "Urgent," a breaking news story of interest. Five bells meant "Bulletin," a REALLY big story. Twelve bells meant a "Flash," which translated as "Get ready to remake page 1." (Various sources claim that 15, or even 20, bells rang the day President Kennedy was shot.)

Copy editors also had to draw up page designs, using pencils and special sheets of paper. (The folks who worked day shift had already drawn the ads on the inside pages.) Again, all this is handled by computer today.

When I arrived, reporters typed their stories out (OK, the typewriters were electric), onto special sheets, which were then scanned so the automatic typesetters could read them. (Usually, this worked.) Now reporters type their stories straight into computer terminals, with almost no paper involved.

The pressmen (there were few, if any, women) arrived around 9 or 10 p.m., along with the folks who stuffed inserts into papers and sorted them for the carriers. They all disappeared when the StarNews shifted print operations to its sister paper in Fayetteville.

Working for the StarNews now is more than just writing for the print product. In the old days, deadlines were generally 5 p.m., unless you were covering a night meeting or a night game. Now the deadline is generally 11 a.m., and you can usually find stories online the day before they appear in the print edition.

To adapt, I'm having to learn a lot of new digital tricks. Still, most days, it remains a lot of fun. If they'll keep me, I'd like to hang around a while longer.

Reporter Ben Steelman can be reached at 910-343-2208 or Ben.Steelman@StarNewsOnline.com.

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